Lost My Light
by amor-remanet
Summary: Dean's most reliable relationship has always been with his own self-loathing.  Dean character study; VERY DARK, SEVERAL POTENTIAL TRIGGERS; RATED M FOR A REASON. DeanxAlastair, DeanxBela, DeanxCas, DeanxLisa, & DeanxOFCs.


Pastor Jim, Dean has noticed, is not the same as Dad — inasmuch as his eight-year-old mind can consider it so, he finds this statement redundant, but the underlying complexities puzzle and confuse him. When Dad comes back from his hunts, Dean has to tell him that everything's okay. He has to work with whatever they have to make some kind of dinner happen for them — but Pastor Jim apologizes for leaving Dean and Sam alone, even though he's going out to pick up food.

With three-year-old Sam's head of brown hair on his lap, Dean looks around the church — they're sitting in the front pew, with all the lights on and lines of salt at every possible entrance, and at his side, Dean has a pistol whose bullets have been blessed. He's no good at firing it, or so he thinks — Dad hasn't really taught him how yet, and he has to hold it with both hands, and usually he misses his targets — he hit Dad in the leg once, when he meant to hit a beer can, and as Dad picked the bullet out of his muscle and stitched it up, the insults never stopped flying — You've got to learn to do this better, Dean. …That was such a miserable shot — how the Hell are you gonna protect Sammy if you can't even shoot a sidearm?

The next time Dad took Dean shooting, Dean hit all the empty bottles in a bull's eye, but Dad still reminded him of the time with the can, and how he missed that easy shot — and how he couldn't just rely on luck.

Sam yawns, and nuzzles against Dean's leg, and Dean can't help thinking that, for all he talks about it, Dad doesn't do a very good job of protecting Sam. Dean runs his hand over Sam's hair so much that he forgets he's doing it. There's something special about Dean's little brother, but Dad's never here. He's off fighting monsters and bad guys and things that go bump in the night… while his sons — his family — wait for Pastor Jim to get back with whatever they're calling dinner tonight. Thoughts of destiny and being a grown up and angels and demons and a holy war do not cross Dean's mind as he yawns himself — he's just hungry, and he's sleepy, and he wonders if Something Bad has found Pastor Jim and Gotten Him — because Dad says that Bad Things do things like that, and if the Bad Things got to Pastor Jim, then they could be coming here. And if they're coming here, there's the salt lines, but they could get over those, and then Dean would be the only one here to protect Sam.

And he can't even shoot a sidearm, which he guesses is what you call a pistol.

The slam of the church's front door sounds like firecrackers, and Dean startles — he wraps his hand around the gun and jumps up onto the long wooden bench — and he knows that whatever it is will be too far off for him, but then he sees Pastor Jim's black coat and he takes a deep break. Finally, the warm smell of chicken hits him — Sam must get it too, because he sticks his head up and beams down the aisle at the smiling preacher-man. Practically drowning in Dean's hand-me-downs, the four-year-old hops off the pew and toddles down the red carpet, and wraps his arms around their caretaker's waist, jubilantly crying, "Uncle Jim! Uncle Jim! What'd you get for dinner, Uncle Jim?"

Pastor Jim laughs as he reaches down to pat Sam's head — and he drops the plastic bag of carry-out when his palm comes up covered in something red — Dean pales, recognizing it as blood. But why would Sam be bleeding? Their guardian falls to his knees and looks Sam over… then, for some reason, knots his brow. "Dean, why don't you come over here?" Nodding, Dean obeys; Pastor Jim might not be Dad, but right now, he's as good as, and that means that you do what he tells you to do. He pries the gun from Dean's hand, and Sam gasps when he sees the crimson stain on its handle — more blood.

As he looks up at Dean, Pastor Jim's face is whiter than snow. "Let me see your hand, son," he says, and his voice trembles, but Dean does one better and shows off both of them.

There are bloody circles in the middle of his palms. Dean pales, and thinks he might be sick — and Pastor Jim starts muttering, Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, and Dean knows — he doesn't know how he knows, but he knows — that, somehow, he's done something wrong. He interrupts the prayer, protesting, "I don't know how those got there, Uncle Jim — I don't! Sammy and me didn't do anything we weren't supposed to — we were good, I promise!"

Pastor Jim just shakes his head and runs a hand down the back of Dean's head. "I know you were, kiddo. …Come on. My office — let's get these wrapped up."

Dean tries not to think about this night anymore. Sometimes, he dreams about it, but he has no right to be bleeding like that when he should be looking out for his brother.

When Dean goes on his first hunt with Dad, he is eleven; Sam is seven, and he goes to stay the night with Uncle Bobby, who just got in from hunting werewolves in Ohio or something like that.

It's winter, and it is not a full moon. Much to Dean's dismay, Dad does not drive him to go look for werewolves — instead, they're going to hunt a rawhead. Dean sits in the front seat of the Impala while Dad's blasting Zeppelin, and he reads the pages in Dad's journal about the beast they seek — "…They go after bad kids?" Dean asks, and recites the rhyme that Dad wrote down: "Rawhead and Bloody Bones / Steals naughty children from their homes, / Takes them to his dirty den, / And they are never seen again…"

His voice trails off and he looks up at Dad, his eyes wide and the memory of Fort Douglas too fresh in his memory for comfort — he thinks of the Shtriga, and what it did to Sam, and how Dad who always got the monsters couldn't find it, and catch it, and kill it dead — Dean tries to think of everything that's happened in the months since then… And he's been good, hasn't he? He's done good by Dad — he's kept Sam safe, for all the bullies in his brother's class have tried to make that hard, and for all there could be monsters coming at them from all directions.

He stares up at his father's face, what he can make out of it in the headlights, and even as the one word leaves his lips, Dean hates how small and girly and broken it sounds: "…Dad?"

John Winchester's smile is not a pleasant one, and it makes Dean want to shiver; he only keeps himself from doing so because he's already sounded weak one too many times tonight. It's bitter, that smile (which is almost a smirk), and it reminds Dean of the edge of a knife. "Buck up, kiddo," Dad tells him with a laugh, which also doesn't bring Dean any comfort. "I'm not gonna let anything happen to you."

Dad does not keep his promise; something happens to Dean.

Not a serious something — the rawhead only gets him in the arm… Dean, despite what Dad told him on the drive, acts as the bait, luring the thing out to where Dad waits with a souped-up taser — and when they're close enough, Dad shouts at him, "Now, Dean! Run!" — but even though he makes a break for it, the beast claws up his arm before Dad kills it, digging in one of its long, dirty nails and dragging it down several inches from Dean's wrist.

But the wound isn't all that bad. It doesn't even require going to the hospital — Dean just wraps a towel around it for the drive back to Uncle Bobby's. Sam's asleep when they get there, curled up on the sofa with one of Uncle Bobby's dogs, and Dad's grip is hard on the back of Dean's neck as he brings his boy into the kitchen. Uncle Bobby makes them drink holy water first, just to make sure they're them — and then he lets Dean have a couple sips of whiskey while Dad stitches up the gash. First there's the rubbing alcohol, which burns, but Dean knows they can't just let the wound go and get infected — but whiskey, Dean knows, is also alcohol and, though he takes the glass from Uncle Bobby's hand, he gives it a suspicious glance. Dean sniffs the amber liquid first, and pulls a face because it smells terrible — then winces as Dad's needle pierces his skin.

"It'll help the pain, boy," he explains; his voice is growly, but there's a warmth to it, which makes Dean feel better, even though the alcohol sets his throat on fire.

Dad says nothing for a long time, while Dean tells Uncle Bobby about what happened… then, abruptly, Dad interrupts him when Dean gets to talking about how he got hurt: "I told you to fucking run, Dean." The jerk of needle and dental floss through flesh stings sharper this time — it yanks Dean's skin together, and though there's some haze in his brain from Uncle Bobby's drink, this aches. "I mean… What was so hard for you to understand about run? Even Sammy could've gotten out of that thing's way!"

"John—" Uncle Bobby snaps at him, eyes flashing dangerously, a first-class glower sitting there, like a thunderstorm on his face.

"No, Bobby, don't you fucking John me!" Dad pauses his work, looks over his shoulder at Bobby and the small space between them seems to ignite, smolder, crackle. For the first time in his life, Dean suspects that there is something he can't understand going on between his father and the uncle who is not his father's brother. They glare at each other and, just as quickly as he turned around, Dad returns to fixing Dean's arm. "The boy's got to learn — you can't have slip ups like that when you're hunting. Slip ups like that cost lives!"

"Yeah, like Bill Harvelle's?" Rolling his eyes, Uncle Bobby throws back the rest of his own drink.

"Shut up, Bobby!" Dad's voice, when he says this, is not loud, but low and dangerous — quiet, like so many of the things they hunt. "…Maybe I just need to train you harder, Dean," he mutters, after a long silence, as he reaches the end of Dean's stitches and starts tying them up. "You're probably just heavy enough that it's starting to hold you — HEY!"

For this, Uncle Bobby smacks Dad on the back of the head, and they devolve into bickering, with Uncle Bobby shouting over and over that Dad has no idea what he's talking about and that Dean is just fine and only learning and it was his first hunt, John, what the Hell else did you expect — but when Dean goes upstairs (after rousing Sam and putting him to bed first), when he turns on the upstairs bathroom light and looks at himself in the mirror, he sees Dad's point. Before he takes off his shirt, he sees it, and it's even clearer once he's naked and forced to face himself. A little voice in the back of his head tells him that it's not so bad — vaguely, only very vaguely, he remembers photographs of Dad at his age — mementos saved from the house in Lawrence, along with pictures of Mom, and pictures of happier times — and Dad looked about the same as he does now. And, that conscience adds on, Dean's not fat; his shoulders are broad, and he's on the stocky side, and Dad looked just like he does, except for his eyes and hair, which Dean got from Mom…

But Dad, at age eleven, didn't need to worry about hunting ghosts, and demons, and rawheads, and monsters that would scare your worst nightmares.

Dean swallows thickly and starts muttering at his reflection — "You're a loser," he tells it, because he knows this is the truth. "You're a fat, gross loser and you can't even save yourself — who's going to look out for Sammy if you can't? …Oink oink, Porky Pig. Yeah, you'll take that pie and Funyuns because you're a pig!" All the words taste like poison on his tongue, but in Dean's ears, they ring like truth.

Even when Sam calls to him, "Dean? Can you shut off the light," Dean does not allow himself to lose focus on this fact: he's a blob, and he has to try so much harder if he's going to keep Sam safe.

It takes years for anyone to notice anything, even when he sometimes passes out — not that Dean can blame them for that. Passing out tends to happen when you're a hunter, or a hunter's son/surrogate nephew; you go after a ghost, and it makes you run too hard or dodge too fast, and when it's gone, all Dean ever wants to do is sleep; he disguises the exhaustion's causes and brushes them off. More importantly, though, when he's fourteen and Sam is ten, both his little brother and Uncle Bobby call it an eating disorder, and those, Dean knows from the health classes he's suffered through, are chick problems.

For another, maybe he's not as smart as Sammy is, but he's not dumb enough to just let himself be a typical case. Typical cases get noticed; getting noticed gets you their so-called "help"; and the last thing that Dean needs or deserves is help.

At first, he tries eating salads and vegetables and things — but they're disgusting, so instead, he just stops eating. But that makes his head spin and his stomach ache, even though it's empty, like he's going to throw up against his will, which isn't pleasant. So he gives up, and, with tears in his eyes as he does it, he eats something — Dad's out hunting a vengeful spirit, and Sam's asleep, and Dean just inhales an entire bag of Funyuns, then the Cheetos, then the Bugles — and once he's so full that he doesn't want to move, he barrels into the bathroom and sticks his hand far enough into his throat that he throws up.

A cycle emerges — Dean eats barely enough to get by; he gets taller, and he trains obsessively, regardless of whether or not Dad's around to be his drill sergeant, because he can't afford to let himself slip up again, because slip ups get people killed, and he can't let that fate befall his Sam; the hunger gets to him, and he splurges (fails in his mission to have a better body, a perfect one, except that he can't be perfect) — but it's his throwing up that finally gets him caught.

The tile of Bobby's bathroom floor is freezing cold underneath the fraying holes in the knees of Dean's jeans, and the dinner he upchucks comes back on him with an acidic blaze. Normally, he doesn't notice this — it must be because it's cold — Bobby's cooking isn't bad, for all it has a survivalist edge, but Dean can't let himself keep it down, he can't because, if he does, he'll let himself get lax — but then, someone bangs on the door. "Dean!" Sam calls in at him — and Dean's whole body clenches up — "Dean, what's going on?"

"Nothing, Sam, I'm fine!" How much has his brother heard?

The doorknob jostles, then falls off. Dean snaps his head up at the door like a deer in the headlights, and sees Bobby standing there before him, grimacing and pale. Sam's behind him, and on the verge of tears; Bobby pulls Dean off the floor with a jerk of his arm. All Dean thinks, as he sits on the sofa next to Sam, staring daggers at the floor while Bobby explains exactly why this behavior is Bad For Him, is that he's failed in getting caught.

In Flagstaff, Sam runs away before Dean can even notice what happens.

He is fifteen, and Sam eleven. For four days, Dean fakes their school, calling the office and saying in an affected, deep voice that he's Dad, telling them, "Dean's sick and he won't be in today, running a fever of 102 — can you believe that? Kids these days, am I right?"

By Sam's and Bobby's standards, Dean's been "good" since they found him puking up his guts — he eats, and badly, and he talks about how much he loves to do so with swaggering overcompensation (because he must be fine if he'll stomach a fucking cheeseburger); when anyone's around to hear him, he keeps himself from throwing up and, instead, just trains longer, harder, because there's no way, considering the life they lead, that anyone can argue with that. But when Sam disappears on him, Dean stops eating. He tries to — he goes to a diner that he likes, uses Dad's fake credit card to get dinner boxed up to go… and throws it into his trashcan fire as soon as he gets it back to the house they're squatting in.

All he does for those four days is sleep and look for Sam, overturning everything he can, and not finding any traces of his little brother — and he can hear their father's voice every time he turns up with nothing: What the Hell were you doing, Dean? You're supposed to look out for your little brother! Where the fuck did you let Sammy get away from you? When Dad comes home on Saturday, Dean's light-headed and so out of it on starvation that all his thoughts get jumbled up and lost; limply, he tries to defend himself, to explain what happened, but his words come out in sighs and mumbles instead of the sir, yes, sir! snaps that John wants to hear. As Dean gets to his feet, his entire body shakes — Dad's fist connects with his nose and he staggers back into the wall, but the pain is only a wet match in a dark cave, a flicker of which Dean is only vaguely aware.

The hair-pulling stings. The three swift thumps on the back of the head thud like a bass drum. The kick to Dean's knee, the elbow to his gut, and the barrage of smacks and punches to his ribcage have Dean doubled over so much that it doesn't occur to him he's being dragged to the door and thrown down the front steps until he stumbles, falls, and hits the dry earth. Dad's rage rings in his ears: "Don't you dare come back without your brother!"

Dean staggers down the road for three miles until he finds an overpass that he sleeps under, without drying the blood from under his nose. In the morning, he's roused from a nightmare by the Impala's horn. Dad takes him into the passenger seat and cleans him up, tapes his nose with the repair skills he picked up in 'Nam, checks him for any serious head trauma. Then, as if nothing happened at all, he tells Dean, "Put your seatbelt on. Let's go find Sammy."

They're in Nevada on January 24th, 1995, Dean's sixteenth birthday. He doesn't understand — there's nothing here to hunt, but Dad assured Dean when they drove here that this trip would mean a lot to him. Eleven-going-on-twelve years old, Sam is curled up in the motel room with some book he's reading for school, which Dean doesn't understand — how can school be more important than the people they need to save? And what can be so important here that Dad's letting them take a rare night off? For all his questions, Dean sits on the bench outside their room's door, just like Dad told him to do

Dad returns with a girl on his arm — her ginger-colored hair is ratted out and the jacket she's wearing might be the only way in which she acknowledges the cold. "This your boy?" she asks him. Her smile is lopsided, and looks broken, and she has teeth missing — but Dad nods and leads her up to the bench.

"Dean," he explains, "this is Christa. Christa, Dean."

Their introductions have no need for further pleasantries; all she needs to know is that Dean's eighteen, and Dad assures her that he is. With a grin on his face, Dad chucks to him a stolen set of keys for room 23, and bids him, "Go on, kid — make yourself a man."

Dean is not sure that his hour with Christa makes him a man; he proves to be a nervous lover, and he follows her lead — he kisses back when she lets her mouth collide with his; she pulls him to the bed, positions his hips atop hers; and she runs a hand up and down his side while talking him through how to fuck her. It's fast, because he can't hold his erection for that long once he's inside her — she's warm around his cock, but something feels wrong, loose, and without fully realizing it, he knows that she's been with more men that he can fathom. The noises she makes for him, the moans and the grunts and the oh, yeah, baby green eyes, just like that — all of them make him want to run to the bathroom and throw up.

As he leaves the room behind her, Dean swallows thickly. Dad pats him on the back and takes him around the shoulders, guiding him back to their proper room, where Dean pukes and takes a shower, and exhausted from the days of driving, Dad passes out, so he notices neither. Dean sleeps on the floor, rather than wake up Sam by crawling into bed. He doesn't feel right again — he barely eats, he barely sleeps, he gives himself no breaks from training harder than he ever has — until a few weeks later, when he picks up a crossbow with a silver-tipped bullet and shoots a werewolf in the heart, and when he and Dad stand on a rocky overlook, staring down at the valley below them and the beast's burning corpse.

This is Dean's life: fire, bullets, and destruction. The only thing that saves it is the thought of Sammy, back alone in the Impala, worrying about the werewolf coming to eat his heart, and of all the people who get to stay alive now, all because Dean and Dad put this thing into its grave.

Dean finds Lisa Braeden in the winter, when he is nineteen, by accident — no, literally: he finds her by accident. He rear-ends her car while parallel parking the Impala. They talk, just to trade each other's information (even though Dean's is fake and the damage isn't bad at all), during which he offers to buy her coffee, since, by most people's standards, it's too early yet to buy her a beer. Smirking, she surveys him, twitches her nose like Samantha from Bewitched, and supposes that she could spare the time. "I don't teach my yoga class on Fridays," she explains with a sardonic shrug, tossing her hair over one shoulder.

She takes him to a little cafe a couple blocks from their fender-bender, and for four hours, they drink black coffee and just talk. It's comfortable — more comfortable than anything else Dean's ever experienced… with Dad and Sammy down in Florida, out of sight but not of mind, with Christa and Amanda Heckerling both distant memories and Cassie Robinson four years into a future that gapes before Dean like a black hole — plotless, and empty, and swallowing up everything that gets close enough, one in which he too easily drowns when it comes to the front of his mind. He tries not to think about that, to live in the moment — it's partly some bullshit therapy technique that Sam read about in a book, and told Dean about when he suspected (rightly so) that Dean was making himself puke again, but more than that, in the cafe with Lisa, it's that she makes the inside of his chest feel warm, and when she brings a smile to his face, he doesn't need to force it into existence.

"…It's getting dark," she points out with a glance through the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows. "Do you want to come back to my place, maybe? …I do this for all the cute nomads who rear-end me. It's totally routine… and it'd make me feel better if you just said yes."

When she flashes him all her perfect teeth, he can't refuse.

At the end of their weekend together, Dean does not want to say that he and Lisa make love, because making love is such a chick thing to say, but she bends him around in ways he didn't know that he could bend — and her hands work up and down his muscles, finding spots of tension in his back and shoulders and working them out — and when they sit in her favorite armchair, with her in his lap, tight and slick and hot and moaning as she rides him, Dean feels like the rapid beating of his heart is a good thing. He moves his hips beneath her, trying to plumb deeper into her, to find that sweet spot — and when he does, her cheeks flush, her orgasm screams through the night, and he doesn't let himself come until he's gotten her off twice more.

He wants to sneak off in the middle of the night, but a girl like Lisa deserves much better than that. Dean waits until Monday morning to make his exit, and as he hits the Interstate, he feels a writhing in his chest, a longing to turn around and just stay with her. He does not know that she is pregnant, or that in some months, she will have a son named Ben, who has his eyes and her hair and her father's chin and who she will insist, up one side and down the other, is not Dean Winchester's child. All he knows is that she might be the best he'll ever get, and that he can never have her without the ever-present threat of ruining her life, just like he ruins everything.

And, besides, he's supposed to be at Bobby's by now and when Dad finds out he's not, Dean's never gonna hear the end of it. He floors the accelerator and thanks whatever might be listening that no one else is in his way.

"JESUS CHRIST, SAMMY!"

The glass sails past Dean's head, nearly missing him on its way to the wall. Dad reeks of Jack Daniels, but it's clear from the glare he's shooting Sam that he didn't intend to hit his younger son. Whether or not he would have minded hitting Dean is a moot point.

"I told you, Dad," Sam says again, his voice rumbling even as he tries to keep it level. "I got in — and on a full scholarship. And Bobby helped me buy the bus ticket to Palo Alto, so you don't have to worry about paying for anything. I know what to do — I'll keep myself safe—"

"Just how in the fuck do you propose to do that?" Dad snaps. "You're gonna be alone out there — and Dean and me? We can't just swoop into California all the time to keep an eye on you—"

"You don't need to keep a fucking eye on me! Stop treating me like I'm a child!" In response to this bellowing, Dad advances toward Sam slowly, as if he's approaching a sleeping beast — and once he's close enough, Sam backhands him, the same way that he's seen Dad do to Dean once or twice before, with the same firm stroke that cuts through the air with white heat, and the same flash behind his eyes, and the same intention… and as much as he hates it, deep in the empty pit of his stomach (he hasn't eaten for two days, too anxious with the weight of Sam's secret plans to go to Stanford skulking in his heart), Dean just knows: whatever it is that lurks inside of Dad, that bubbles up with his anger and makes him raise his hand to Dean, it's inside of Sammy too.

The three of them stand there, too stunned to speak for several moments; Sam breaks that silence by picking up his loaded backpack, tilting the stolen suitcase full of his clothes and personal effects. "My bus leaves in an hour," he hisses as he shoves his way past Dad, heading for the door of yet another squatters' house.

Just before his hand settles on the knob, Dad barks at him, "Sammy!" He turns around and every contortion on his young face screams of utter loathing; his what? snaps through the air like a rubber band slingshot. Dad takes one deep breath, then two, and then he gives his ultimatum: "If you walk out that door, don't you ever — ever — come back, you hear me?"

Sam walks out the door; Dean runs after him, and keeps on his trail for half a mile before Sam turns around and demands, "What do you want from me?"

"Come on," Dean sighs. "Just… it'll take five minutes to go back there and apologize to him. Maybe ten — maybe. …It doesn't have to be like this—"

"And I don't have to apologize to him for anything." When Sam looks him up and down, Dean feels the heat of his little brother's rage, his hatred — and he wishes he could look inside Sam's head, know what he's thinking, where his brother falls with respect to him and Dad. "You better head back to him, Dean," Sam spits. "He'll be pissed if he thinks you're leaving too."

Without another word, Sam returns to his escaping. He doesn't turn around again, even when Dean calls after him, Sam! …SAM! …SAMMY!

Dean wonders if this is what getting shot in the heart feels like.

Dean doesn't blink at the blood that he gets on the motel bedsheets, and he doesn't flinch as he stitches up the gash on his left pec. All he thinks is that he's out one perfectly good shirt, and all because Dad went to run off and chase omens on his own (ones he wouldn't explain, and that Dean, apparently, couldn't help with), instead of helping Dean with this hunt. With an experienced hand, Dean drags the needle and the dental floss down the red, angry wound, until it's in one piece again — for the most part, anyway. It'll heal just fine, and add a new scar to Dean's collection, the map of his history that goes across his entire body.

Then, before he knows what he's doing, Dean has his favorite knife in his hands — the sharp, silver one that Bobby gave him when he turned eighteen. He called Sam last night, while he was up in the woods, stalking his mark, and got told to never call again — and he still hears those words, clearer than anything: "I have a good life here, Dean. …Jessica and I are moving in together, I'm at the top of most of my classes, and… I'm not your personal research monkey, just waiting for you to call me up with a question, okay? …Do your own hunting, for once." And Dean tilts the blade toward his wrist — he slices himself up, piercing the skin, cutting deep in a vibrant X.

For a moment, he lets it bleed — he feels his pulse harder there, at the center of the wound, and the pain that comes with every heartbeat — with the needle piercing his flesh again as he works to clean this mess up — reminds him that, for whatever reason, he's still alive.

Dean meets a demon in a bar in Colorado Springs, and she says her name is Laurel. He doesn't see her black eyes until they're both drunk, and making out, and he's pressed against a brick wall, unzipping his pants in a back alley. His cock is hard as his hand goes for his flask of holy water — but she grabs him by the wrist and whispers, "Nuh uh, pretty boy. You get to move when I tell you to."

"You fucking bitch," he hisses, trying to put his other hand on Bobby's silver knife; she just pins this one to the wall as well, without any apparent effort on her part.

She smirks. "And you're so clever, too." When she kisses him again, slides her freezing tongue around his mouth, he makes a half-baked attempt at resisting her, only to receive the crack of his shoulder against the wall. "Listen, sugar, I know things. About your little brother. And your daddy… They're both getting circled by demons even more powerful than I am, and if you give me what I want…" She lets one hand drop, and palms at his crotch with movements like a snake's… "then I'll tell you everything I know. You can go save them and be the big old hero like you always wanted."

Dean turns her around, pinning her into the wall, and fucks her hard, until her egging on becomes begging for him to stop.

As he drives to Palo Alto, Dean only stops for gas, maybe a coffee or some water, if he's splurging or if he feels tired; he blasts Zeppelin in lieu of company. Laurel's words gyrate in his mind, moving him ever forward with the sound of Dad's voicemail message blaring in his ear: the crackling, the ghostly voice that Dean barely manages to get out of it — and the fact that Dad won't answer his phone. Although the idea occurs to him, Dean does not call Sam; Sam wouldn't answer for him anyway.

Finally, he breaks. Dean stops at a gas station with a diner; he orders a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a slice of pumpkin pie a la mode, with extra whipped cream on top — and maybe five miles up the road, he pulls onto the shoulder, wanders down the embankment into the drying field and in the chill that seems too cold for October, he doubles over, gets on his knees and throws up everything. He cleans his mouth out with a shot of Jack and presses on, not sleeping until he finds an empty parking lot about an hour away from Sam's apartment.

Stretching out in his baby's backseat, using his hand-me-down-from-Dad leather jacket as a blanket and his flannel shirt as a pillow, Dean tries to relax. He goes out for eleven hours and it's dark when he rouses. He lets the burn of another shot wake him up, and then makes his way to Stanford. Sam's going to hate him for this, and despite the counter-arguments he prepares to the sound of "Travelling Riverside Blues," Dean can't blame him — but he can't do this by himself.

Dean barely pays attention as the doctor reads his diagnosis, and all he does at the prognosis — "Mister Berkowitz, we can do our best to make you comfortable, but at the maximum, I would give you three weeks" — is blink. It all makes sense to him that it would come full circle like this: his first hunt was a rawhead and he fucked it up; his last hunt — for he does not sense the holy presence watching over him, or feel the intangible, feathery wings that run down his cheek with whispers of faith and hope, or even or a second think that angels could exist beyond Mom's old promise that they were there to protect him… he only knows that this hunt, undoubtedly his last one, was also a rawhead, and that, because he's not even half the man that Dad wanted him to be, he screwed up irreparably, and so much so that Sam's going to be left alone in this world.

Through his own idiocy only, Dean has failed in his only ever-present mission, seeing to the protection of his little brother, and when Sam fusses over him, and shepherds him into the Impala to go and see his "specialist," Dean wishes that he could just hurry up and have the heart attack that puts him out of everybody else's misery. His one job is not a difficult one — keep Sam safe, keep him out of trouble, watch out for him and make sure that he knows how to watch out for himself. If Dean can't do that simple thing, what business does he have in staying alive?

Staring out at the long stretch of road ahead of them, Dean slumps against the window and sighs. It occurs to him that he never should have tried to get their family back together, that maybe he and Dad were better off walking the earth alone and that Sam should've stayed at Stanford with Jessica — and he knows that this is faulty logic, that he had no other choice and that Sam was having nightmares about Jess dying anyway… but still. It's compelling evidence. Maybe the people he loves are just better off without him.

Dean closes his eyes and starts counting sheep; he gets to two-hundred-seventeen before he nods off properly, and his heart still hasn't stopped.

Even though he screams at Sam's corpse — even though he demands of it, What am I supposed to do? — Dean harbors no such questions. He takes his silver knife from Bobby and drags it down his wrist in a vertical line, right through the passive-aggressive pink scars left over from the first time that he cut himself — he gasps as he makes the deep incision, going further into his flesh than he's ever gone before, watching the blood bubble up and spill onto the floor — and as he stitches this one up, he gets the inspiration.

He stops before getting into the Impala, and sticks his hand into his throat so that he vomits the fried chicken that Bobby made him eat; even coming up on him, it feels greasy, sickening — but purging it reassures him, strengthens him, and he takes off for the nearest crossroads. He knows what he needs to do.

This current predicament, Dean more than blames on the African Dream Root — but, regardless, having that scapegoat doesn't fix him or where he finds himself. When he closes his eyes at night, he's always back inside that long hallway with the ugly wallpaper, and he always finds himself in that motel room with his black-eyed self — and, worst of all, he's started following Dean while he's awake.

The first time it happens, Dean brushes it off as mere coincidence. It's been two weeks since he and Sam got stuck at the Mystery Spot, and the nightmares have been consistent since then — every night, like clockwork, as soon as he drifts off — boom! He's face-to-face with his mental evil twin — and finally, after a night spent tossing and turning on what must be the most uncomfortable bed in all Wisconsin, Dean goes to brush his teeth. It's business as usual, he thinks — until he looks up and sees that his reflection's eyes are black. The toothbrush falls from his mouth and clatters in the sink, and once Dean's rubbed his eyes, nothing looks out of the ordinary.

He tells himself that there's nothing wrong with him. These aren't hallucinations, because Sam says that those don't start until you're closer to your midnight date with a hungry Hell-hound, so they must be an overactive imagination, and they can't mean anything serious, but…

Little glimpses start cropping up more frequently — his eyes look black in the Impala's rearview mirror, or he'll be peering in a window, trying to decide if a diner's worth the effort to go in and order, and for a few seconds, his reflection smirks back at him, lips twisting up in a sinister curve even though Dean's own stay put — the eyes go black, it snaps its fingers, and everything's normal again, except for Sam's hand on Dean's shoulder and the lingering question, "…So are we getting dinner or driving some more?"

Slowly but surely, it gets worse and after Monument, after he and Sam barely get out alive before Lilith kills Henricksen, the sheriff, and that virgin secretary, Nancy, Dean doesn't hesitate in suggesting they go hunt the Morton House. Through all the prep work and the research, Dean knows what he's getting himself into, and he tries to care… but he knows that Sam will keep himself safe, and the Leap Year Ghost can take Dean and kill him. Three months, one month, twenty-four hours — it doesn't matter how long he has until he goes to Hell: every mirror he looks into shows him those cold black eyes, that self-satisfied smirk that knows too much. When he, Sam, and the Ghostfacers (minus Corbett) walk down the Morton House's steps that morning, Dean thinks he must be running from something, but he can't think of what it is.

One night, he baits the nightmares. He showers off before bed, and he stands in front of the mirror in the nude — he puts one hand on either side of the sink and leans closer to the surface of the glass; he looks at himself straight on and holds that gaze for a lengthy, silent moment; his eyes do not turn black. Instead, he watches as his scars seem to spread and to contort in the reflection, until Dean starts to feel his skin inching around on his muscles, trying to change. He glances down at the scars on the inside of his arm, memories of all the times he's turned his own knife on himself; nothing's moved. Dean takes two shots as a nightcap and he goes to sleep.

He walks that hallway. He enters that room. He doesn't notice until his evil twin turns around that both of them are naked — and, then, he doesn't notice it soon enough to keep the black-eyed son of a bitch from knocking him to the floor. The nightmare swoops down on him, and in the glaring light above them, Dean watches as the nightmare's skin starts twisting around, just like his did in the mirrors — the map of their shared history spreads up until there are more scars on this nightmare than there is skin. He grins and, as he does, his shining teeth seem to sharpen. The light blows out and all of a sudden, his hands feel like ice around Dean's wrists. As he eases himself down, covering Dean with his body, the chill leaks up with his motions, until their lips collide and it reaches its peak. The nightmare kisses Dean like a hungry wolf goes after prey.

Soon enough, the cold goes deeper — there's a rush of pain and the throb Dean recognizes as blood pumping through a wound in his back, and the nightmare laughs as he thrusts his cock so far into Dean's ass that Dean thinks he'll never feel warm again. As the thrusts slow down to a slow, more comfortable pace — almost leisurely, intimate… and Dean didn't have to wonder why because the nightmare had said it before: it's him; it doesn't know him inside and out, because they're one and the same.

The nightmare shudders as it comes inside him — Dean shudders, ejaculate spilling on his stomach — the nightmare disappears, and when Dean sits up, only his bones, his heart and lungs don't spill out onto his lap. Even under the thick, warm blood, he shivers. The edges of his wound are jagged, and vicious — and the bloody knife trembles in his hand…

Dean wakes with a start to the sound of Sam in the shower, singing "You Give Love A Bad Name." He does not tell Sam about this dream, as that would give his brother an unnecessary burden, one that isn't his to carry. And later in the morning, while they're working this new case, he gets a call from some monster purporting to be Dad.

Ruby's description of Hell was only half-right, Dean finds. There's torture, and there's darkness, and there's a fire — but every time it licks at him, it doesn't sear as much as it freezes, and soon the freezing turns to burning, reaching down through the layers of his skin and muscle, spreading something dark into his blood and bones, something that he feels every time his heart beats. (The presence of heartbeats in Hell surprises Dean, but he cannot quite put his finger on why.) The fire also gives no light, just makes the darkness seem less dark in places, and soon enough, Dean's eyes grow accustomed to the dim.

The dungeon that Dean comes to think of as his has high ceilings, full of other souls on other racks with other demons torturing them, but only one ever comes to rip Dean apart: he stands taller than the rest of them, and his cadaverous grey-blue skin strains to hold, it's stretched so tightly across his bones — once, when he gets too close, Dean bites his shoulder and the blood that bubbles up has the appearance of tar, only distinct against the shades because it's darker than they are. His eyes — pure white, like polished gems — shine through the black and a twisted map of scars is the only reason he doesn't fall apart. His razor hacks and dissects with discomfiting precision, and once he's opened some new avenue into Dean, his frost-covered fingers probe through Dean's flesh, through his muscle, brush against his bones and find all of his memories and secrets, even the ones he never shared with Sam. Some prove more resistant — that time Dean hit Dad in the leg with the pistol; how he almost got Sam killed by the Shtriga, then got clawed up by the rawhead; every single time he locked Bobby's bathroom door and shoved his fingers as far as they would go down his throat, all while smiling and joking and telling both Sam and their uncle-in-all-but-blood, the closest thing they had to a real father, that he was fine; how much Lisa set his body on fire and how much he wanted to stay with her; his wish to have a heart attack and keel over — but, sooner or later, all of them come rushing up, right into Alastair's claws.

"Alastair," Dean begs one time, about seven years into their time together, with tears leaking from his eyes, cutting salty little trails down the sweat and blood and filth that have collected on his cheek. Without a word, Alastair leans into him, pushes Dean back against the rack with just his hips, and hesitates a moment; his breath smacks into Dean like a snowstorm, just before he licks the tears away. "Please, Alastair…" Dean hates the way that his voice cracks and the weakness that sneaks into it. "Please, just stop… I'll do anything."

Alastair smirks and dangles the razor before Dean's face. It swings back and forth, and back, and forth… until it slows to a stop. "You know what you need to do," he hisses, with an affectionate lilt and a skeletal finger tracing down from Dean's forehead to his clavicle. "If I've told you once, I've told you two thousand, five hundred and fifty-five times: I'll put my razor down if you pick one up." Dean spits in the demon's face; Alastair smirks. "I thought you'd say that, Dean."

Pressing into Dean the whole time, Alastair snakes down to his knees — and he rubs his pointed nose against the muscles of Dean's stomach, bestowing tender kisses on all the golden skin he finds, trailing them down to Dean's cock, which he makes hard with one flick of his long, icy tongue. At the kiss he gives the head, Dean moans and mutters a string of no's — but Alastair nevertheless curls his fingers around the shaft. Peering up at Dean, he matter-of-factly says, "This will all be so much easier if you just admit that you want it."

The broken phrase, "I want it," claws its way up from Dean's ragged vocal chords, because he knows it's better to lie than fight and make it worse.

The blindfold that Alastair gives him settles Dean's nerves at first, because he no longer needs to watch other demons torturing other souls, and the last thing he needs getting into his dreams of bloody vengeance are other people's miseries. Thanks much — he had enough of that on Earth. But as the time trickles by, the lack of sight starts wearing on him. First, he doesn't hear the others' screams, but feels them, trembling and vibrating down deep within his bones — then he imagines faces, when he knows that, not only is he not looking at them, but he doesn't have the light to see anything at all — but he still sees them and he hears their voices: Sam glares at him and tells him that he's so disappointed, seeing his big brother fall this far; Bobby says that Dean won't be able to withstand Hell, and that black-eyed skank Ruby stands there, agreeing with him; Dad chews him out for leaving Sam alone on Earth, then comes at him with a fist — and Dean can feel his nose breaking…

His hands are still fixed to the rack; he cannot touch his face, to see if any fracture has occurred — but the blood drips down into his mouth, and Dean chokes it back, fights the coppery taste and swallows because this is the only honest warmth he's had in decades, a warmth that doesn't come to him from the tingles of slowly freezing to a second death. In the desert-dry air, he licks his lips, lets them dry, repeats this process, and stretches them until they crack and he tastes more blood. He doesn't get used to it, but it's better than nothing.

Then, when Alastair snakes a finger down Dean's cheek — for it can be no one else; no other demon has that same, low chuckle — it makes Dean shiver first, then vomit. This does not have the same sensation as it did on Earth — the feeling that Dean's been rid of something poisonous, that he needed to purge before it did him too much damage. Instead, Dean's blood comes up; he knows this because it comes in thick, hot clumps, and it brings his organs with it; he feels them catching and liquefying in his throat before he hacks them up. He loses count of which ones end up on the ground beside his feet.

Alastair's razor seems to sing as he unsheathes it, and the cool blade sizzles as it crafts a nick on Dean's neck, meets a dribble of Dean's blood and sends the secret screaming out of him, his untold fascination with the pain inflicted on him and a memory of one time, on a hunt when he was seventeen, when Dad had to save his ass and never let him hear the end of it… because a witch with superhuman strength got her hands around his neck and Dean liked being choked too much to fight back against her. This is how Alastair says, Hello.

"Oh, that is just… so lovely, Dean," Alastair purrs, nuzzling up against Dean's side, . His tongue hits Dean's cheek like a bucket of water from a Siberian lake, and trails down to lick the wound — when he's done, he comes up and kisses the air like some pompous cunt French chef. "Your memories, and all these twisty little layers that you've got to you… I swear, you never fail to disappoint me. I mean, to be honest, when I met you, I thought you'd just be some standard, dime a dozen, cardboard cut-out of a self-righteous prick… but, always, always, always — right when I think I've got your angsty little soul figured out, you throw something new my way."

The air around them crackles as Alastair's motions cut through it, as he rolls to lean against Dean's front and presses a bony forearm into Dean's windpipe. Against Dean's will, a smile breaks and cracks across his face; in Alastair's cackle, Dean can hear his smirk — and Alastair grinds against his hips with possessive ferocity. Dean feels his cock hardening beneath the contact and he knows that there's no point in fighting. "You really are my little multifoliate rose, Dean," Alastair whispers, so close to Dean's ear that his cracked, chapped lips brush up against the skin. "…Where do you think we should start today? Asphyxiation can be fun, but you know how much I love my knives…"

"Where's your usual offer?" Dean snarls. As much as he can bend his knee, he does, knocking it into Alastair's with as much force as he can manage; the demon coos, but doesn't budge.

"That tired old thing?" Alastair sighs. "I did consider giving it to you again, but it just seems like such a tedious preamble after the past thirty years. You can only tell me 'no' so many times before I get the point, you know."

Dean's breath comes in with a full-body tremor — he bucks his shoulder into Alastair's with no intent to hurt, only to draw attention to himself, and with a smacking sound — the snap of the demon's fingers — Alastair tightens up the rack. Leaning as close to Alastair as he can — seeing a twisted hallucination of his face — and trying to bite him but feeling noting underneath his teeth, Dean has only one objective in his mind. He knows nothing of Seals breaking, or of Lilith's plans, or of anything beyond the movement of his lips and the grave whisper that he gives to Alastair: "Sign me up."

Alastair's fingers slip below the blindfold's hem, and lift the fabric off of Dean's eyes. At the demon's white eyes and his smile, Dean feels some nauseating comfort and upchucks again. What comes out is black, and thick, and it looks like ectoplasm in the lighter darkness that surrounds the pitch-black halo emanating off of Alastair. In the aphotic, stygian fires, he takes that hand Alastair offers to bring him to his feet, and he doesn't fight the demon's hand on his back, or the sudden, cracking contact that comes as their bodies intertwine. For the first time, he moves his lips and tongue against Alastair's with passionate intensity, instead of an automatic desire to avoid the pain. He wraps his arm around Alastair's shoulders and shoves his nails into Alastair's flesh; he feels the blood — warm, even considering the fact that Alastair is perpetually cold to the touch — beneath them as he drags his hand down the demon's back.

Underneath his hold, Alastair gives him an ecstatic moan; Dean shoves him to the ground and takes the demon's cock in his hand. But the contentment of dominance does not last and, once again, Alastair gets Dean on his back and enters him, pounds into his prostate and makes Dean's entire body tremble with fear and longing.

"I doubt that it consoles you any, but you lasted longer than I did."

Dean tilts his head and looks down at Bela, just in time with the thrust he sends into her — she gives him an mmm, but otherwise, holds her composure; the nails that rake down his back are so frustratingly matter-of-fact and the angry sex they've kept putting off feels… nice, Dean supposes, in that uptight, just lie back and think of England way. "I mean, down here, thirty years is quite impressive, Dean. I only lasted three before I decided that I'd had more than enough of that topside," she explains, tightening her warm muscles around his girth — he moans and while he's off his guard, she tightens her grip on his shoulder. She rides him still, as she topples him over, onto his back, and the sudden motion sends his dick deeper into her. They both groan, and gasp, and their breath turns into pants.

It all devolves from there; things fall apart, and they claw, and bite, and scratch, and rip each other open with their bare hands alone — like animals, and they fuck each other to pieces, like animals until the secrets come spilling out. Digging her teeth into his Adam's apple, Bela pulls up all the times that Dean's vomited by his own volition; she rips that piece of flesh out and sits up, bucking her hips against him and tightening herself again; jamming her nails into the open wound she left on his stomach, she chews it for a minute, then spits it into his left eye. For this, he punches into her belly, right at her womb, and he scrapes and scratches around inside her until something of hers sticks…

He hears a throaty whisper that makes his ribs and fingers quake — Just lie down, Abby darling. This will hurt you, just a smidge, but it'll feel good soon; Daddy promises, it will… And don't go telling Mummy or anybody else, my dear. They'll all know that you're a whore and that it's your fault this is happening. And he feels a searing pain that shoots up through him, like it might rip him apart. As it recedes, Dean looks up at Bela, his green eyes wide; she purses her lips, brings them together in a thin white line, and tears well up in her eyes. For once, they understand each other. She sees his walls, he knows why her parents had to die, and when he sits and cleaves to her and kisses her fully, on the mouth, a shaky tenderness invades.

She whispers into his mouth, "Keep that to yourself or I will fucking end you, do I make myself clear?" He nods. She bites into his lower lip and tears that bit of him away; he shoves her onto her back and fucks her harder than he's fucked anyone before.

And as they work each other over, Alastair sits off to the side, humming some tune he learned in Poland, 1939, and stroking his own cock at the sight his students give him.

When Alastair says he's taking Dean to see his father, Dean doesn't take the demon at his word. Demons lie, he figures, and maybe this one's being metaphorical. But he isn't, and Dean knows the body stretched out before him on the rack, he knows the face, with its beard and its black flyaway hair — and he knows the look he gets once the initial wide-eyed shock wears off: the stoic look, all set jaw and half-dead eyes and a frown with a fire hiding underneath it — Dad's version of any other parent's I'm not mad; I'm Disappointed. Dean swallows thickly as he shakes his head and whispers, "no," but regardless, and whistling as he does so, Alastair slinks an arm around his shoulders and leads him closer, until he can smell the death reeking off his father, the same way that whiskey used to do.

Father and son lock eyes for a long moment, one wherein the silence seems to simmer, each man waiting for the other to look away; Dean breaks first, glancing down at his feet until Alastair grabs him by the hair and yanks his head up. "You're not supposed to be here," Dean hisses, wrinkling his nose and shaking his hear, eyes never leaving his father's. "You're… You got out. Helped us kill Yellow-Eyes… what're you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question," Dad half-drawls, half-snarls. "Didn't I teach you better than this, Dean? …And what's going to happen to your brother, with you down here? Did you even think about that?" The knife briefly quivers in Dean's hand, and his jaw trembles; he looks down at the blade, and wonders what it'd do if he cut himself in Hell, but then Dad snaps— "I sold my soul for this? So you could abandon Sam up there and jump off Alastair's rack the first chance you got?" — and Dean's hand flies up, he pushes the flat edge of his instrument into his father's neck.

Slowly shaking his head, he whispers, "You son of a bitch — you have no idea what he put me through—"

"Does it even matter?" John barks at him. "You gave up, Dean — that's what matters. You gave up on protecting Sam, you gave up resisting, you gave—"

He shuts up when Dean slices across his windpipe. "You weren't. there," he growls, and sticks the knife into John's flesh, right below his chin, as far as he can make it go. As he drags it down past John's clavicle, he sees so many of Dad's secrets, things he never knew or wanted to know, and tears start welling up as Dean makes himself ignore them. "I fell apart to get our family back together, so we could fight whatever this is together, Dad — and you left me there! All you told me was that I might have to kill my brother — the brother you always told me to protect, and then you went and you fucking died!"

Dean jerks the knife out of the cross he's made and stabs it through each crack between his father's ribs — one by one, several times each, until he loses count, he can't see straight through the rage and tears, and John's pulse burns in his ears. "You left us alone up there, Dad. No idea where to look or what to do — and you knew things. You could've helped us and you didn't." Finally, and with more certainty than he has any right to, Dean jams the blade into his father's heart; the memories scream out at him, and he twists it, pushes it into John's chest until the blood gets on the hilt. "You deserve to be in here," he says, voice wobbling like some late night drunk. "I don't. I am here because of you."

He looks into Dad's face for something, anything — loathing or resent or the highly improbably I'm sorry, Dean; all the other souls he's visited have reacted somehow — but all he gets is a blank stare and the glacial chill of Alastair's lips on the back of his neck.

Alastair's fingers tap across Dean's shoulder and he whispers, "There, now. You can't tell me you don't feel a little bit better after giving him that…" and as the demon leads Dean off to visit with Bela again — their "training sessions," he calls them, watching on and making himself impossible to ignore — Dean cannot deny the truth in that statement. This poison is all he has now — this, and the future that yawns before him, the inescapability of becoming what he used to hunt — and the honesty with which he rips the souls apart provides his last relief.

At night, when he dreams, it's always of turning these tricks he's learned on Alastair, and without questioning, Dean knows why: he wasn't ever good enough, and now he's just become a monster.

Even though he's been rid of the ghost sickness for some weeks now, Dean still runs a fever and finds himself twitching in the dark of night, until he jolts awake, the memories of Hell fresh in his mind and a pain in his hands that he hasn't felt in ages. He lifts them off the motel bed and stares into the red marks — and his gaze stays there long enough to see them closing up, turning into pale scars instead. Snapping his head to the side, he traces his eyes up the long, trench-coat covered arm, to the impassive face with the dark hair and the big blue eyes that see right through him with no difficulty at all.

"Cas…" he starts — blearily, because he's still half-asleep and, besides that, the fever's given him a throbbing headache — before the angel cuts him off:

"You're ill," Castiel explains, as though this answers everything. When Dean gives him a Look, he goes on: "The ghost sickness has had some lingering after-effects, and you aren't helping anything by using your malady as a way to disguise your self-induced vomiting. …Your symptoms aren't improving, and they distress Sam. He's prayed to us since you started displaying these—"

"Yeah, because you guys are so into answering the prayers of us little people," Dean snaps. "You wanted me to let you waste that entire town back there, all one thousand two hundred fourteen of 'em."

Castiel sighs. "You're not thinking clearly, Dean. We've discussed this at some length already."

"Why the Hell are you here, you son of a bitch?" This response, Dean knows, is inappropriate — but he lets it rage at Castiel regardless, because for all the angel says that he's important, Dean's only been handed more trouble and more ass-reaming pain since he got brought back.

Frowning, Castiel tilts his head, and runs his hand through Dean's hair; Dean gets the uncomfortable sensation of his thoughts being pried into, but even so, the fever subsides. "Because your brother's voice irritates me," he says, almost petulantly, as though he's been denied the answer he really wants to give. "And because you should talk to him about your time in Hell before it destroys you from the inside." In the increasingly familiar sound of rushing feathers, Castiel disappears, and Dean's head hits the pillow. For now, the nightmares let him be. All he wants is for them to not be true; he wants that with a fervor, in a way he's never wanted anything else, and as much as he hates it, Dean knows he cannot have this wish.

The incantation falls off Dean's lips as easily as an insult and in the back of his mind, he doesn't expect it to work at all. He lights the match and drops it on the herbs he's collected. They flare up in blue fire and Dean waits; for too long, nothing happens.

But, then, the candles flicker like they might blow out. The familiar chill encroaches on him and the remnants of taint in Dean's bones writhe even before the bony hand takes him by the shoulder and throws him to the ground. He doesn't need to see the whites of the demon's eyes; he knows, and he intones, "Alastair," with reverence, without regret.

Alastair's meat-suit is not his pediatrician from before, and it is not the one that Dean will torture in a few weeks' time — but, instead, a younger man, no more than twenty, with sandy-colored hair and a knife-wound of a smirk on his innocent face, crouches down and straddles Dean's hips. "Do you like him?" Alastair asks, yanking Dean up by the jacket. He pulls it off and throws it aside, then toys at the hem of Dean's t-shirt. "I decided to try taking a page from Lilith's book… There's something so rewarding about corrupting the innocent, don't you think?"

Dean supposes that he agrees — and his mind floods with memories of taking Amanda Heckerling's virginity, and that of so many other girls after her; memories of motel room bed sheets getting clenched in pretty, manicured hands and of so many voices (high-pitched and shrill; throaty, with a texture like rich chocolate; musical, which made sense because the girl had classical opera training) screaming his name — and shoots Alastair a smile. As Dean finds his shirt worming off him, the demon's fingers hit his skin, and the cold comes as such a shock that, for a moment, he thinks there's water running down his chest — but he can't contemplate too long before Alastair gives a pensive hum.

"What?" Dean demands — and by way of answering, Alastair puts his palm over the raised red mark on Dean's shoulder, the one in the shape of Castiel's hand. Chills shoot through him, shocking, with an electric burn; Dean shakes so hard he thinks he's having a seizure — and then Alastair removes his hand. The tremors stop and, in their place, Alastair rips off Dean's jeans, strips himself; he takes Dean for his own without waiting for permission.

And Dean doesn't want it — he hates what Sam has no doubt gotten up to on his "need-to-take-a" walk: calling that black-eyed skank he won't stop fucking, tossing her into some motel mattress and giving it to her hard, and fast, and reckless, and self-destructive — and Dean calls Sam out, too often, on how bad for him Ruby is… He shouldn't… And it still feels wrong, moaning as Alastair's cock finds his prostate and as Alastair's freezing stomach rubs against his own dick… It is wrong, Dean knows that — but when he tries to move, when Alastair slams his shoulder to the ground with force enough to near dislocate it, when the pain and pleasure both erupt and make his vision go white as the cum stains his belly, Dean remembers just how much he needs it.

"Oh, don't beat yourself up like that," Alastair murmurs, licking Dean's Adam's apple, tonguing all up and down Dean's throat. Even without the interrogation techniques Hell gives him, he can read Dean like a blinking neon sign. "Your hypocrisy's so endearing, you know. And I'll always give you what you need — you know that."

Dean answers with a bestial kiss, and tastes the flesh he bites from Alastair's lips. He savors this, and in some weeks, when Alastair is dead, Dean longs for the bitter poison of his embrace.

After Cas gets him and the Impala away from Zachariah, Dean wants to go and puke, or at least drive until he's ready to pass out. But he didn't eat anything for the three days he spent in the future, Cas looks just as wiped as he is from putting in the Grace to save them, and for the fifth time, Dean's attempts to reach Sam end in his brother's voicemail talking at him. He throws the phone down the dashboard, and Cas stares at it without speaking. "…I'm sure that Sam is probably busy," he finally explains. "There's no need to break your phone."

"We've still got yours," Dean bites out, almost snarling, without meaning to.

"I ran out of minutes."

Briefly, Dean wonders who the fuck Cas called that ate up the last of his minutes, but ultimately, he guesses that it doesn't matter. It might've been Chuck and, either way, the lack of knowledge doesn't keep Dean from sighing once he finally pulls into a motel's parking lot, and it doesn't keep him from letting himself fall into his baby's steering wheel and close his eyes. His head pounds in time with his heart, thumping deep and throbbing; in between the pulses, he feels the world spinning, and the sensation like he's going to throw up against his will. Much better at lying since their last adventure, Cas takes Dean's arm around his shoulder, gets them a room, and sets Dean on the bed with more gentleness than, in his haze, Dean thinks he deserves. Rolling onto his side, Dean nods off and lets the time slip by — until he feels a calm, warm jostle on his shoulder.

Cas's face is the first thing Dean makes out when he blinks back into consciousness, followed by the mixed scents of beef, bacon, and something fruity. "The Hell did you go?" he grunts.

There's an odd expression on Cas's face as he holds out a styrofoam container — his lips twist into a pale frown and his big blue eyes have a flash of something Dean can't quite make out, but that brings memories of Cas-from-the-Future and his broken smile rushing up. "You shouldn't go so long without eating, Dean," he explains, as Dean opens the box to see a bacon cheeseburger and a slice of cherry pie. "That's… It's some of the stuff that humans need to do, right?"

"Well, not for nothing, Cas, but have you been looking through my ta…" Dean's joke about the Warrant song trails off as the lightheadedness smacks him again; Cas puts his hand on Dean's shoulder, tells him to eat, but when he looks up into the angel's eyes, he hears the rattling of pills in an orange bottle, smells the incense and the absinthe, and sees the grease-heavy hair and the intoxicated grin of Cas's doppleganger instead of what he knows is there. The words from Lucifer-in-Sam's lips buzz around Dean's mind: We will always end up here — meaning Cas will always end up like that… unless Dean can do something about it.

But can he, really?

"Dean," Cas snaps, voice firming as his hold on Dean's shoulder tightens. "Eat. Please."

Dean nods, feeling that uncomfortable sensation that he gets when Cas is looking into him and knowing him from the inside out — it tingles in his chest first, spreading out from there until he feels the creeping in his muscles — and the visions from his past flash up, showing him what Cas is seeing. All the times he lied to Sam or Bobby about how much he'd eaten or trained, or whether or not he'd found somewhere to make himself throw up. Everything he swallowed and then upchucked. Cas bites into his lower lip, just enough for Dean to notice, and Dean recognizes the sadness behind his eyes. He eats.

Tonight is not the first time that they've slept together — that happened before they took on Raphael, after they escaped the brothel, and in retrospect, as Castiel's hands remove his clothes with such care and delicacy, as Cas fucks him gently and makes him moan in sounds like praying, Dean wishes that he'd made the angel's first time a better experience. But messing things up is just his way, he silently supposes, even as he turns onto his side, presses his stomach into the warm skin of his angel's naked back, and falls asleep with his arm draped around Cas's waist.

Dean and Cas settle into… whatever it is they have almost too easily for Dean to notice, and because he doesn't notice it, he doesn't question it — and, besides, it's not a relationship. Every time he thinks this while they're having sex, Dean can almost hear Sam's voice in his head, going all trust sidekick geek boy on him and arguing that, whether it's romantic or not, it's still technically a relationship — and every time Dean cums for Cas, he remembers that all linguistic squabbling is, really, kind of pointless. Dean's most reliable relationship has always been with his own self-loathing.

But, eventually, the questions start, and as with many of the shitty things that have happened lately, they're Zachariah's fault.

After Carthage, after Jo and Ellen blow themselves to Hell, and after burning their last photograph, the first thing Dean does is throw back four shots of Jack and go up to the bed at Bobby's saved for him and Cas. He passes out after only taking off his jacket and his jeans, and next thing he knows, he's in that same hallway he remembers well — with its disgusting, blue-and-green wallpaper, and the one room right at the end. He hasn't had this dream in ages, and Dean still knows exactly where he is; the only differences he finds are that, when he opens the door, the light isn't flicking on and off, and that Zachariah stands at the desk, an impatient frown on his smug, fat face. With a wave of his hand, the door slams shut behind Dean.

"That was a very stupid thing you did tonight," the monkey-suited angel drawls. "Not that I don't expect this behavior from you, Dean, because I do, but… have you been listening to me — or to Castiel, even — at all while you've been working on this scheme to kill the Devil?"

Dean spits, "Nah," and shakes his head. "That'd be like reading the instruction manual for a doomsday device, and you know… who in their right mind does that?"

Zachariah tilts his head. "Do you really think that now is the time to be giving me your self-deprecating sarcasm?"

With a shrug of his shoulders: "Hey, I gotta get my kicks somehow while we're cruising up to Armageddon."

"Yes, well…" The backhand smack Zachariah gives him spins Dean's head almost a full one hundred-eighty degrees, and knocks him to a heap on the floor besides — and with the way the pain rockets through him, Dean says a silent prayer of thanks that this is just a goddamn dream. "Be that as it may… you need to stop fighting me and your Destiny, boy. Because, regardless of whether or not I find you, all the energy that you spend dispatching and running from the folks in my corner? And all the energy that you spend dragging Castiel down into the mud? That's energy you're not spending fighting Lucifer."

After Zachariah kicks him in the nose, Dean just looks up and grins. "You're just jealous that Cas is getting some and you're not…" For which Zachariah jerks Dean up by his collar and punches his teeth in.

Dean rouses with a start, to see Cas sitting next to him. Without asking, Cas seems to know what Dean needs; all Dean does is give him a nod. His hands brush against Dean's skin, warm and gentle, as he gathers up the hem of Dean's shirt and eases it off, leaving Dean in just his boxers. Then, methodically, Cas strips himself; he coaxes Dean to lie down on his stomach, then descends, tightens his legs on Dean's sides, and he's a comforting presence on the small of Dean's back, even before his hands start working down the path of Dean's spine — finding the unaddressed knots of tension and rubbing into them until, bringing up relieved moans (and the occasional wince as something long-harbored comes under Cas's slender fingers). By the time Cas maneuvers Dean onto his back, he's already hardening; Cas leans down atop his chest, grinds their hips together, and kisses Dean as though this will save them both.

But when he feels Cas's cock — stiff and rubbing against his own — Dean says from his throat, "Cas, wait…"

Cas respects this, but gives Dean another, softer kiss before he pulls back. He trails his fingers down Dean's cheek and with a shake of his head, he whispers, "You aren't poison like you think, Dean. And even if you were, I would still want this."

Dean leans up to kiss Cas first.


End file.
